Bud Selig begins cleanup of Dodgers mess

Gwen Knapp

Published 4:00 am, Friday, April 22, 2011

The MLB takeover of the Dodgers on Wednesday should not inspire a second of gloating among Giants fans. Bud Selig rescued their rivals, earning applause from almost every quarter of Los Angeles except the turf occupied by displaced owner Frank McCourt.

The commissioner applied a tourniquet to the franchise, which McCourt never should have acquired in the first place. He put very little of his own cash into the 2004 purchase, and he had already been brushed back in attempts to buy the Angels and Red Sox.

When he and wife Jamie took the team from Rupert Murdoch's corporate clutches, they promised to return the Dodgers to the good old days of family ownership, O'Malley-style. Now, next to them, Tiger and Elin Woods look like Ward and June Cleaver.

The McCourts split in 2009, amid accusations that Jamie had consorted with her driver. Their custody fight for the Dodgers would have been damaging enough, especially since neither had the cash to buy out the other spouse. But the details of the divorce proceedings revealed deep fault lines beneath their stewardship of the club.

Mismanaged financially during the Fox years, the team started turning a profit again. But McCourt, already heavily in debt from the original purchase, borrowed more money against the franchise to cover an array of expenses, some of which held dubious value for the team. He reportedly owes at least $450 million.

According to various published reports on the divorce, the McCourts financed makeup sessions for Jamie, a hairstylist charging $150,000 annually for regular house calls, and the services of a Russian-born "healer" named Vladimir Shpunt who watched games on TV and tried to channel his special energy to the Dodgers.

In the beginning, the McCourts spent freely on upgrading the team, helping the Dodgers reach the playoffs four times in their first six years as owners. But the club started cutting back on player development, a Dodgers specialty, a few years ago, and the major-league payroll dropped 21 percent from 2008 to 2010. McCourt needed a $30 million loan from his team's television partner to meet the payroll this month.

As fans became more alienated by the McCourt administration, season-ticket sales took a dive. On the second and third dates of the season-opening series against the Giants, Dodger Stadium felt as lifeless as the Coliseum in Oakland during an A's-Royals game.

On Opening Night, a sellout crowd turned out, full of passion. Then someone punched Giants fan Bryan Stow in the parking lot afterward, dropping him to the ground and putting him in the hospital with severe brain trauma. The incident drew more attention than any other act of violence near a baseball stadium in recent history, in part because Dodgers fans spoke out about the increasingly disturbing atmosphere at their iconic park.

Selig ended up sending a representative out to Los Angeles to review Dodgers security, and within a week, he had seized control of the team. Did his representative, seeing the inner workings of the club up close, sound the final alarm?

Or did details about the McCourts' tax status have more to do with the action? A year ago, with help from Jamie McCourt, the Los Angeles Times reported that the couple had managed to pay no income taxes, at either the state or federal level, from 2004 to 2009. Their potentially muddled use of business funds certainly could have attracted the attention of the IRS.

It's not clear what made the decision for Selig. Over the last year, he has dealt with a bankrupt team in Texas and the Bernie Madoff entanglements of the Mets franchise. In neither case did he try to shove an owner aside. He said Thursday that the Dodgers' circumstances required bigger action.

As he oversaw the Rangers' transition out of bankruptcy and into new ownership, Selig did not handcuff the team. He allowed deals for players such as Cliff Lee and Bengie Molina, which ultimately helped send Texas to its first World Series. That should reassure Dodgers fans, and maybe quell some glee in the Bay Area.

Frank McCourt had negotiated a deal worth $3 billion over 20 years for local TV rights from Fox, and hoped it would preserve his ownership. But Selig apparently feared that too much of the money would go to the divorce settlement (and who knows what else?) rather than into improving one of the highest-profile franchises in pro sports.

So he took the most drastic measure of his tenure as commissioner. He would never have made the move if the alternative hadn't been worse.